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Saturday, May 23, 2009

Eastern Conferrence Finals Game 2

Hedo Turkoglu and Mo Williams came alive during the fourth quarter Friday, powering their teams' offenses. But when it came down to the final shot, Williams turned to the man who gets it done all the time for the Cavs, assisting LeBron for a three-pointer over the arms of Turkoglu that dropped in as time expired to give Cleveland a 95-95 victory in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals. LeBron's shot at the top of the key rescued the Cavs from what would have been a disastrous loss after blowing a 23-point lead. The Magic chipped away at that first-half deficit, finally tying the game with 6:13 to go on a 15-footer by Rashard Lewis, who once more proved difficult for the Cavs to contain and led the Magic with 23 points. Courtney Lee followed with a 10-footer at the 5:26 mark to give Orlando its first lead. The Cavs retook the lead on a Williams three-pointer about a minute later, and then Turkoglu, who scored eight of his 21 in the fourth quarter, hit a three-pointer to tie the game with 48 seconds left. Turkoglu's shot with less than a second to go gave Orlando what looked to be the winning 95-93 margin, but it instead merely set up another signature moment for LeBron. It was yet another high scoring night for LeBron, who had 35 points to go with five assists and four rebounds, and he was essentially the only scorer on the floor until Mo Williams scored nine of his 19 points in the final period. Delonte West added 12 points, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas had 12 as well, though his greatest contribution was on the boards, where he pulled down 15 rebounds. He was competitive with Dwight Howard all night as the Cavs refused to let Howard go off the way he did in the Magic's Game 1 victory. Howard followed up a 30-point night with just eight shots and 10 points to go with 18 rebounds. The frightening thing for the Cavs is they nearly lost even as they contained Howard. The Magic's psyche clearly took a hit on the buzzer-beater, but they have played the Cavs remarkably well on the road, and have a chance to take command of the series if they play just as well at home.

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